Wagner students get eye-opening tour of South Shore

Advance photo/Nicholas FeveloHistorian Barnett Shephard takes a group of Wagner College students on a South Shore tour, including a visit to the Seguine Mansion, above.

For many students at Wagner College, the South Shore of Staten Island is the Boondocks. For others, it's home.

But for natives and newcomers alike, a tour of the South Shore's historic places and institutions opened the eyes of a class of young scholars to cultural treasures.

Students majoring in history at the Grymes Hill school are immersing themselves in borough culture this semester as part of a required local history course that covers Island history from the colonial era to the present.

Guided by local historian Barnett Shepherd, eight Wagner students and professor Lori Weintrob toured significant sites on the South Shore this spring, including Decker Farm, Sandy Ground, Woodrow United Methodist Church, the Seguine Mansion and the Olmsted-Beil house.

"I always had the impression that the South Shore had a more agrarian past than the North Shore," said junior Danielle Sinagra, who had never discovered any of the historical destinations even while growing up in nearby Eltingville. "But what impresses me is that I've never known about these places-- and they are so important."

During a three-hour tour by van, Shepherd introduced the points of interest with anecdotes and information about the Island's past.

In a departure from classroom palaver, the students were treated to seaside vistas and the occasional chicken and peacock along the tour, visiting the sites of 18th-century gravestones and 19th-century cabbage fields.

Newly constructed row houses abutted the historic sites at nearly every point of the tour.

"There are a lot of modern elements, but you can see the historical roots of certain places," said Justina Licata, president of Wagner's History Club, in describing the South Shore. She said she was disappointed with the state of historical preservation on the Island, and wished the sites could be better maintained.

"This breaks away from stereotypes of Staten Island," said Peter Blackmer, a student from upstate who was visiting the South Shore for the first time.

The class has been studying Staten Island within a trans-Atlantic context; the shift from a Protestant past to a predominately Catholic population, and local histories of the American Revolution, the Civil War and 19th-century industrialization.

Shepherd, a prolific author on Island history, is currently completing a book on the history of Tottenville.